Religious experience

I grew up in a very religious family and community. Because of that, I actually had a period where i prayed a lot, read a lot in the Bible and really "felt" Christianity. You need to understand that my family is pentecostal --- which means they believe in personal relationship with God, praying for the sick (and getting them healed) as a natural part of a Christians life, praying in thungs and other things. I have experienced special feelings that got me invested in Christianity, and I have heard testemonials of healing and Godly help from close family and friends. Even a friend at School was born with one leg too short, and it suposedly grew to the correct size after someone praid for him. I have "heard the inner voice" of the holy spirit, and "felt the power" of prayer.

How do I explain these things? I would like to believe that God is real, however, the intellectual barriers to my faith are high. Moreover, the fact that other religions have similar "real experiences" should go to show that just because one can get real experience of Christianity, that doesn't prove its truth. Yet miracles are hard to deny, especially when whats been healed is so blatantly obvious and the person who's been healed isn't some shady guy but people close to me.

Don't be afraid to tell your opinion --- I have been open and honest here, and I expect nothing less of you if you want to share your thoughts in this forum.

Things happen and may seem to be miraculous .

For example; I see no reason why a child with a developmental anomaly couldn't naturally correct itself.

You would only believe this to be miraculous, if that is what you wanted to believe. 

Furthermore, the power of positivity shouldn't be underestimated, and certainly strong religious faith can generate a positive state of mind.

Nonetheless, none of this actually  proves the existence of a supernatural godhead, but just reaffirms an already established belief.

GOD can be what ever you want it to be, and certainly doesn't have to be the same interpretation as you would find in popularly inherited  Arabian theism.

Science and knowledge have exceeded such archaic hypotheses.

For me: GOD is simply the principle, that might give purpose to the universe and the evolution of matter therein.....A process that perhaps we are an integral part of.

As such, I postulate that GOD creates us and we recreate GOD....Traditional worship was probably inevitable, but nonetheless, an unnecessary development.

I have had several religious experiences. May or may not be the Christian God, it's hard to tell. And I may have contributed preconcieved notions to my experiences as well.

I don't rule it out, that it is the Christian God I experienced.

I also "saw" Jesus a few weeks ago. But there was no sense of the divine,and it felt and looked more like a visual thing than a real presence. I see a lot of things that other people don't see. Hallucinations? Mybe.

To me, its an innate development. I believe in a kind of presupposition of the concept of God from the get-go of life. A certain degree of submission to one true being- that's what I felt growing up. In my opinion, faith develops with time but its origin is right at the beginning when you start getting real. A half of my family is religious, the other half- not so much. I mean by faith, they're all theists but by practice, they have different views. So, in a way, I was free of much pressure to be religious from my family. But at the same time, I started delving and researching and found myself as a theist and practicing anyways. Now, I hold my own views that I feel are more acceptable to my faith than my whole family members. So, faith just strengthens with time- it's upto me how I act- either to suppress it or catalyze. 

I was also raised christian. But after an honest investigation into the matter, I could not remain that way. I'd say your religious experience is just like anybody else's and equally invalid as evidence for their particular god's existence. 

“I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

No, this is not a quote from my third cousin Albert, it's from Stephen Hawking.

The optical or radio telescope is not the instrument used to find heaven. If I want to find Andromeda, I’ll consult Stephen. To find heaven, I’ll consult God.

The optical or radio telescope is not the instrument used to find heaven. If I want to find Andromeda, I’ll consult Stephen. To find heaven, I’ll consult God.

Georges Lemaître, who proposed the Big Bag, was a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain.

Gregor Mendel, often recognized as the founder of the modern science of genetics, was a meteorologist, mathematician, biologist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia

Galileo Galilei, famous fellow, was religious.